#ofbeastly

❝A-are you a guest here, miss? ❞

               —— ➳                                    Such purity--and yet, how it burned.                               Crystalline rivulets ran down the swollen                               scorch marks and blackened bruises that                               wound about his bow-stringing arm. The                               night air was brittle, but the pain had been                               too great; this place was the only one that                               could provide relief for the curse--                                                --the spring of the Forest Spirit.

       ❝This place...It feels old.❞ Old, in the way that the room he had once known to be his home had seemed, when he'd taken the time to acknowledge the fact. ❝Do you live here?❞

          竜 ——                               Keep silent, keep still; gods and demons                          ran abundant in this place, and the dangers                          were clear and present. Perhaps this was                          why--no, certainly why Yubaba had sent                          him in the stead of someone less...                                                      ...expendable capable.                               Spirits need not breathe. The air was still.